moccasins of buffalo hide. They all smoked incessantly and affected the airs of the genus cowboy, or vaquero of the plains, of whom we often see specimens roving over hill and plain on horseback, their shoulders covered with gayly colored scrapes, flapping in the wind like wings.
"We pass daily from six to a dozen graves, but not so newly made as those noticed heretofore; so we conclude the cholera is abating.
"There, old Journal! I've done my level best to write you up to date. But it's like climbing these mountains, — uphill work, and dreadfully monotonous!"
"Did you buy a fresh stock of provisions. Captain?" asked Sally O'Dowd, as they were preparing to leave the trading-post which Jean had mentioned, after he had held a long parley with a big, bronzed, and heavily bearded mountaineer, who was strikingly handsome despite his peculiar make-up.
"Yes, Sally. I bought a couple o' hundred pounds oflour, for which I paid a twenty-dollar gold-piece."
"I was feeding the children, and didn't get a chance to make my purchases at the proper time. Won't you hold the teams back a few minutes for me?"
"Yes, but hurry up."
"Let me have a hundred pounds of flour, sir," she said, approaching the counter, behind which the trader stood, smoking a huge meerschaum.
"Anything else?"
"Yes; the balance of this twenty-dollar gold-piece in dried peaches, please."
In filling her order, the trader raised the cloth partition of the tent to reach his base of supplies, and in the middle of the tent Sally espied an unkempt squaw and half-adozen dusky children.
"I'll be compelled to hurry," she said, as he leisurely weighed her fruit. "Captain Ranger is always demanding haste."
